The 1878 Housing Squeeze
Before the skyline, Seattleites were already scrambling to find affordable bedding and basic household furnishings to survive the cold.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
No one need sleep cold if it were generally known that T. P. Freeman, of the Seattle Variety Store, has recently received and has for sale at astonishingly low prices, a large lot of second-hand mattresses, blankets, pillows, and bedsteads. Also a large lot of new goods of the same kind. He wishes also to call attention to his large stock of house-furnishing hardware, crockery, glassware, stoves, furniture, lamps, coal oil, etc. Both second-hand and new, all sold at ruinously low prices.
“No one need sleep cold if it were generally known...”
In 1878, Seattle was a frontier boomtown where the basic cost of living—specifically warmth and shelter—was a constant anxiety for workers. Today, as housing affordability remains a central civic crisis, the 'ruinously low prices' of second-hand essentials read as a haunting reminder that the struggle to establish a secure home is foundational to Seattle's history.
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